What is Context? and How it's different from Content? Content and Context are two common words in the English language. They sound similar, but they have different meanings and usage.
The meaning of “context,” according to dictionary.com, is - "The parts of a written or spoken statement that precede or follow a specific word or passage, usually influencing its meaning or effect"
The meaning of “content,” according to dictionary.com, is - “something that is to be expressed through some medium, as speech, writing, or any of various arts.”
To visualize how context affects our interpretation of content, Bruner & Minturn, 1955 illustrated how expectation could influence set by showing participants an ambiguous figure '13' set in the context of letters or numbers, e.g., perceptual set Bruner Minturn.
The physical stimulus '13' is the same in each case but is perceived differently because of the influence of the context in which it appears. Thus, for example, we EXPECT to see a letter in the context of other letters of the alphabet, whereas we EXPECT to see numbers in the context of other numbers.
As you already know, content marketing is basically the Inbound Marketing tactics incorporating blogs, SEO, social media, and email marketing to attract prospects to your website. The key here is adding context to your content by serving your remarkable educational content to the right prospects at the right time.
Simple ... According to Statistic Brain research, the average adult’s attention span is down to just 8 seconds (Less than that of a goldfish.) So when your content is out of context and not highly relevant, targeted, and personalized based on your contact's it is less likely to get noticed, engaged, or even remembered.
To add context to your content marketing, you have to consider the personality, demographic, behavior of your website visitors. As no one size fits all solution, adding context to content marketing is impossible without tools that allow you to serve smart content. In this post, I will go through HubSpot Software Smart Content Features:
Smart content lets you serve relevant and remarkable content based on anything you know about your contacts.
With traditional content marketing, the bounce rate on landing pages is staggering. Google Analytics Benchmark an average Bounce Rate of 70-90% Landing pages. According to a study done by Haris Interactive and Janrain, 74% of online consumers get frustrated with website content they see has nothing to do with their interests. Once a user is frustrated, chances are they will leave your website.
According to HubSpot, the conversion rate of web pages that had smart content was 20% higher than the pages that didn’t have it.
Using HubSpot smart content in your landing pages allows you to personalize the user's landing page experience based on buyer persona, their lifecycle stage, whether they are visiting your website from a mobile device or via browser, and how they reached your website, for example via a social media network or a paid search campaign.
Implementing smart landing pages with smart forms will result in higher conversion rates and lower your landing page bounce rate. Smart forms know if someone has already filled out the form fields you're asking for in the past so that your site visitors don’t have to fill out the same form repeatedly.
A different set of form fields that the user has not filled before can be displayed. Therefore, capture additional new information about your leads instead of information you already have. As a result, the more information about your leads you capture, the more relevant and targeted content you can serve.
Using HubSpot, you can create a smart CTA based on a contact list or lifecycle stage. Lifecycle Stage is a default HubSpot property designed to designate where contacts are in your marketing funnel. Each stage represents a transition down the funnel; Subscriber, Lead, Marketing Qualified Lead, Sales Qualified Lead, Opportunity, Customer, Evangelist, and Other.
Early-stage CTA buttons can focus on top-of-the-funnel offers and then evolve to direct the lead to demos or sales consultations down the line. You can tailor messages by industry, marketing persona, interest level, geography, or other contact property. Smart CTA's can be based on which contact list your lead is in.
Smart contact lists are created using a wide range of criteria that can include any property in the contact profile. That means that if you serve multiple industries with different marketing personas, you can adapt your site to reflect what you know about each persona's specific set of interests. For example, if you offer a special service to leads or customers in a particular geographic area, you can change your message to be specific to those contacts. Likewise, if you want your most engaged customers to see different offers than others, you can make that happen too.
Email lists have an annual churn rate of 25%. Email list churn rate is the number of subscribers who unsubscribe from your email list in a given time period. In other words, if you are not growing your email list by more than 25% a year … your email list will shrink.
Most email software only allows you to upload a list and send it to it. But since the HubSpot Email tool is integrated with lead generation tools, you can attract new subscribers and grow your list over time. In addition, by using personalization features, you can ensure that your emails match the unique interests of each recipient.
Using HubSpot email, you can dynamically change your email content, including images, text, and CTAs based on the recipient’s past behavior and patterned interests to provide relevant, contextual marketing experiences to every contact in your database.
HubSpot Workflow tool supports branching logic, which means that you can have your contacts follow one path or another based on an action in your workflow. For example, if you send someone an email, you can have that contact receive different content depending on which option they click, A or B.
You can use branching logic in your workflows to check if the contacts in that workflow have performed a specific high-value action or completed a specific event. Branches should act like "mini-goals" that still align with your overall goal.
To sum up, when you have context around your relationship with a contact, you're able to provide more personalized and relevant marketing content that's targeted at their needs. The more personalized and relevant your marketing messages are, have higher the chance of engaging with your contacts.
How are you adding context to your content marketing? What tools are you using? I would love to hear about your experience.